Immigrants push Congress to shorten delays for admitting spouses and children

Sheila Jackson Lee, a member of the Immigration and Border Security subcommittee, argued for improving policies to make America a land of opportunity for immigrant families on Thursday. (AP photo)

Immigrants and advocate groups urged congress to reform outdated laws they blamed for separating close relatives for sometimes upwards of 20 years.

Mathi Mugilan Paguth Arivalan, an ethnic Tamil born in India shared his story with the House subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. He said it was one of thousands in the US today. Arivalan is a permanent legal resident of eight years, working as a software consultant for Newsmax.

Paguth Arivalan told the committee that he met a Malaysian woman, Bhavaneswari, while working on human rights’ issues in Sri. Lanka. The two married on February 14.

“But I have to tell this committee that I was shocked to discover, when, I filed a petition to bring Bhavaneswari to America, my new country, as my new wife, that minimum wait in this category is more than two years,” Paguth Arivalan said on Thursday afternoon. “I understand that this delay has been as long as eight years for some people.”

Arivalan noted that he was shocked since he knew other immigrants with temporary visas who could bring their wives almost immediately.

For immigrants from Latin American countries, the wait times can be worse, according to a representative from the Hispanic rights group La Raza. Clarissa Martinez de Castro told the committee the high volume of immigrants from these countries accounts for the longer wait periods.

“For example, US citizen parents who petition for their adult child from Mexico must wait almost twenty years to be reunited,” Martinez de Castro said. “In that time, it is nearly impossible for the son or daughter to visited the United States, resulting in decades of family separation.”

Republicans on the committee pushed back on some of the petitioners, arguing that some caution was necessary. The committee chairman, Trey Gowdy, R-In., said he agreed with the spirit of the petitioners but worried about abuse of a more open immigration policy.

“There is a very real threat that if greencards were immediately available, marriage fraud would be prevalent,” Gowdy said.

In addition to false marriages, republicans such as Steve King, R-Iowa, worried that easing restrictions on immediate family members could swell the US population, heavily taxing what he called “welfare state.”

Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, used her time to battle back against these arguments.

“None of us will ever describe our nation as a welfare state,” Jackson Lee said. “We view it as the place where you can move from poverty to opportunity,” she said later in her response.

Other Democrats on the committee used their time with the witnesses to try and add context to the immigration debate. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., asked Dr. Demetrios Papademetriou about the level of deportations and the amount spent on immigration enforcement.

Papademetriou, the president of the Migration Policy Institute, said his institute estimated the federal government spends $18 billion a year on enforcing immigration laws, more than all other federal agencies combined.

“$14 billion for all the other federal law enforcement agencies,” Demetrios said.

Demetrios told the committee that the US has a lower per capita immigrant population than countries like Canada and Australia, and was the only modern, industrialized country that did not immediately admit minor children and spouses.